Explosions at Ixtapa resort increase fears of descent into violence

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MEXICO CITY — Two grenades exploded at a Mexican beach resort late Monday, hours before a visit by conservative President-elect Felipe Calderon, increasing fears Mexico could descend into political unrest and violence.

Calderon’s trip went ahead without incident Tuesday and police said no one was wounded in the blasts at a condominium in Ixtapa, an exclusive resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast, in a southern state where police frequently clash with drug gangs.

The grenades, apparently thrown from a building in the condominium complex on the same day as leftist guerrilla bombings in Mexico City, caused minor damage to a building, a police spokeswoman said.

Calderon, who takes office Dec. 1, addressed an exporters’ conference as planned and returned to Mexico City by plane.

Political crisis persists
The blasts on Monday came after a deep political crisis over July’s contested presidential election and deadly street clashes between riot police and protesters seeking the resignation of the governor of Oaxaca state.

Calderon has been targeted by demonstrators who say he used fraud to narrowly defeat leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the presidential vote.

The court that rejected Lopez Obrador’s fraud claims and named Calderon the winner was bombed Monday along with a political party’s headquarters and a bank in the capital

Leftist guerrillas took responsibility for those blasts. There were no injuries.

Calderon, a Harvard-educated former energy minister, made no direct reference to any of the recent blasts in the speech in Ixtapa but said: “We have to work tirelessly to recover (Mexico’s) capacity to confront crime and terrorism.”

He said respect for law and authority had diminished in Mexico.

Ixtapa is an exclusive resort some three hours northwest of Acapulco in Guerrero state, where well-armed drug traffickers frequently fight each other and the police.

“In the place where the incident happened, they found remnants of explosive material, broken windows and a damaged wall,” a Guerrero police spokeswoman said.

Mexican newspapers said in online editions the grenades appeared to have been thrown at federal law enforcement agents on the outskirts of the resort.

Small left-wing rebel groups said they set off the Mexico City bombs to support the protesters in Oaxaca, where demonstrators have barricaded streets and clashed with police in protests in which some 15 people have died.

Calderon inherits a nation divided by the presidential election and suffering from endemic poverty.

He won the vote by less than 1 percentage point and opinion polls show more than 30 percent of Mexicans believe the election was fraudulent, despite the court and international observers declaring the result valid.